It was a bizarre, out-of-the-blue thought, as the guy in the lights was an arresting sight, beautiful and brooding—clearly nothing like me. At best, I was average, maybe a little above, and that was on a cute-hair day. He was also at ease in front of the camera, self-contained and mysterious, which was surely not going to be the case with me.
Regardless, there was something about him, something that struck me in a very particular but indefinable way. I couldn’t look away from him. A tiny burst of electricity zipped through me—a charge that sizzled under my skin all the way down to my toes. How had I not noticed him earlier? Where had I been? This guy was not the sort of person you missed. Pale skin, sharply angled cheekbones and jaw, with shaggy, slightly-too-long coal hair and wide-set deep-brown eyes.
“Heath Beck.” It was Lenny, at my five o’clock, whispering in my ear. “Real-estate wunderkind. Works with the Holland Company. He negotiated the sale of that entire area between Foster and Spring.”
She went on. About how the Holland Company was at the forefront of the revitalization of some of these neglected pockets of Midtown and the Westside, about how she’d heard that he personally had bought a derelict warehouse in Cabbagetown that he was going to develop into high-end loft apartments. I could barely process what she was saying. Heath Beck’s silhouette, lit like an angel, turned her voice to a mosquito’s buzz.
“It’s ridiculous, really,” she concluded, reaching for a can of Diet Coke.
“What is?”
“He’s supposedly dating someone, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them together.”
I whipped around to face her. “Who is he dating?”
“That publicist, Annalise Beard, the one who works for the Hawks. She’s gorgeous. But, like I said, never around. Let me tell you, if I was dating that? One hundred percent never let it out of my sight.” She laughed at her own joke, then looked at me and narrowed her eyes. “Oh, no. Really? Seriously? Are you kidding me?”
I turned back to look at him again.
“So the woman who won’t give any man the time of day finally succumbs,” she marveled. And my friend was right. I had officially succumbed.
Later, when Lenny had gone off to work the room some more, Heath Beck appeared on the other side of the craft table. He was wearing a fitted blue dress shirt, a black tie, and a pair of criminally well-tailored black pants. I lowered my plate of snacks and tried to swallow the remnant of a cheese straw.
Up close he was even taller than I’d realized. Nice smelling and muscular. I tried not to stare directly at him. Or into his eyes, which were warm and brown and so intense that it felt like they were literally piercing my skin. I coughed. The cheese straw wouldn’t go down.
He took a swig of water. “Fair warning? That is one hell of a hellish experience.”
I laughed, clearing my throat as unobtrusively as I could. It sounded like a donkey bray. “You looked great. Totally aced it all the way.” I flushed furiously. I sounded like a teenage girl. I sounded like I liked him.
“I’m Heath.” He looked at me for what seemed like a long time. So long that I felt my entire body grow warm. “What was your name again?” He asked it quietly, purposefully, like he’d been practicing the question in his head before he walked over.
“Daphne,” I said. “Daphne Amos.”
“Your company is the Silver Sisters, right?”
“Daphne!”
It was Lenny, calling me from across the studio. We were up. I scuttled toward the nimbus of lights, aware that Heath was still standing back at the craft table and was probably—no, definitely—noticing the weird plate of snacks (four cheese straws, four grapes, four sea-salt-and-dark-chocolate-covered almonds) that I’d just set down on a stack of four cocktail napkins.
Like I’d anticipated, the photo shoot was excruciatingly awkward. Lenny vamped and puckered and pouted at the camera while I stood beside her, trying to obey the photographer’s encouragement to give her some attitude. I wanted to give it to her, I really did, but instead my face went immobile, I stiffened up, and I had the overwhelming urge to pee.
Somewhere in the middle of the horrific process, Heath ambled up behind the photographer and whispered in her ear.
“Take five, ladies.” She stepped away, her assistant scurrying after her. Heath joined Lenny and me under the lights.
“Lenny Silver-Hirsch,” Lenny chirped, offering her hand.
“Heath Beck,” he said. “Would you mind if I stole your partner for a second, Lenny?”
Lenny’s eyes went wide. She smiled. “Be my guest.”
Heath put his hand on my arm—actually, just inside the upper part of my arm, the spot a little above the elbow—and led me outside the pool of light. In the darkness, he leaned toward me, and I inhaled. He smelled amazing—of some kind of intoxicating scent that I couldn’t place. My arm was tingling where he’d touched me.
“You don’t like this,” he said.
“This?” I asked, waving my finger in the space between us. He couldn’t have been more wrong. I liked it very much.
He smiled. “I mean having your picture taken.”
“Oh, right. No. I mean, yes. I hate it.”
“Me too.”
I blinked at him. “But. You were great up there. Like, completely . . . great.” My face was burning. I was glad we were outside the light.
“I have a trick. A secret that helps me get through things like this.”
I stared at him.
“Do you want to know what it is?” he asked gently.
I cleared my throat. “Absolutely. Yes.”
“I pick out the sexiest woman in the room, and I pretend I’m approaching her. Imagine I’m standing in front of her, about to ask her out for the very first time. I muster all my resources—all my charm and wit and confidence—and then I just slay her with all the amazingness that is me.”
He was still smiling, but when I looked into his dark eyes, they were locked onto mine.
He is like me . . . We are the same . . .
“You understand?” he asked.
Somehow I managed to speak. “I think so. Slay with my amazingness.”
“So go ahead. Do it. Look around and pick out the sexiest guy in the room.”
“Oh.” It was all I could do to tear my eyes away from his and scan the room. My gaze fell upon the guy who’d stood next to me in the group picture, a plastic surgeon. A red-faced, somewhat sweaty guy with caterpillar eyebrows and a scraggly goatee. He wore a giant gold pinky ring.
“Really? That guy?” Heath sounded incredulous. A little crestfallen.
I smiled, then covered my mouth. “I, uh—”
“No, no. It’s fine. I didn’t mean to criticize. I just . . . I guess I expected somebody . . . else. But, different strokes.” He grinned broadly and touched my arm again. My skin goosepimpled.
“When she takes the picture, all you have to do is pretend you’re standing in front of that guy—that strapping fellow you just selected. You stand in front of that guy like the strong, beautiful, intelligent woman that you are. And you give him a look that says, Hey, sweaty guy with that sad beard and pinky ring. We should go out for burritos later.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Burritos?”
“That’s right, burritos.”
He gave me a gentle push back into the lights. The next thing I knew, Lenny and I were draped all over each other, laughing and posing. The camera clicked nonstop, and all the while, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Heath Beck, who, incidentally, wasn’t standing anywhere near the guy with the sad beard and pinky ring.
Later, as Lenny and I made our way through the parking lot to her car, my phone vibrated with a text. Only one word, from a number I didn’t recognize.
Daphne.
I stopped, my heart thudding while Lenny danced around me, oblivious, chattering about the shoot and her husband, Drew, and how much he was going to love the photos.
“Did you give him my number?” I asked her.
She just grinned, and then another text appeared, directly under the first.
We should go out for burritos.
Friday, October 19